A LETTER FROM THE T&W STAFF

Thank You!

This issue of Teacher & Writers Collaborative e-News provides a snapshot of T&W’s ongoing work. T&W is bringing writers to work with students at schools throughout the New York City area, providing resources-including Teachers & Writers magazine-for teachers and teaching artists nationwide, and advocating for writers and teaching artists seeking to begin writers-in-the-schools programs in their cities and towns. T&W is proud of the broad impact of our student writing programs, publications, and national advocacy, none of which would be possible without the generosity and support of our individual donors and institutional funders.

We are grateful to our supporters for their belief in T&W and generous contributions to our work. As always, we appreciate all the individual donors and T&W members who have made personal donations to support our work this year.

T&W is pleased to recognize our institutional supporters, including:

• Amazon.com, which made a first-time grant to T&W in support of our creative writing programs for K-12 students in New York City and publication of thousands of copies of anthologies of student writing.

• The E.H.A. Foundation, a longtime funder that has renewed a multi-year grant for T&W’s work with gifted and talented students in New York City elementary and middle schools.

• ING, whose expanded support for T&W’s multi-genre creative writing program at PS 111 in Manhattan will enable us to serve all first-, second-, and third-grade students at the school this year.

T&W is grateful to all our supporters, including New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, National Endowment for the Arts, Agnes Gund, Axe-Houghton Foundation, Bydale Foundation, Con Edison, Rizzoli, Simon and Eve Colin Foundation, Staten Island Foundation, and Wachovia Wells Fargo Foundation.

Thanks to all of you for helping T&W to bring creative writing programs to thousands of young people at New York City area schools, publish Teachers & Writers magazine, hold 2020 Visions readings in T&W’s Center for Imaginative Writing, implement public poetry projects, and advocate on behalf of writers-in-the-schools programs nationwide.

To make a tax-deductible contribution to support the work of Teachers & Writers Collaborative, please go to: https://www.networkforgood.org/donation/ExpressDonation.aspx?ORGID2=132693372

Or mail your check to:

Teachers & Writers Collaborative
520 Eighth Ave., Ste. 2020
New York, NY 10018

To schedule a visit to a T&W program or to discuss other ways that you can support our work, please contact T&W Director Amy Swauger (aswauger@twc.org) or T&W Director of Development and Marketing Loyal Miles (lmiles@twc.org) at 212-691-6590. Thank you!

MAGAZINE

Highlights from Winter Issue of Teachers & Writers

The winter issue of Teachers & Writers magazine-arriving in your mailboxes soon-offers up a satisfying mix of practical ideas for teaching creative writing and thoughtful perspectives on teaching, writing, and the literary imagination.

We start off with the winning essay from our annual Bechtel Prize competition, selected this year by Phillip Lopate. The essay is a wonderful narrative by Garth Greenwell describing a literature class he taught recently in Sofia, Bulgaria. Greenwell had his students, high school seniors, write stories anchored in the streets and milieu of their native Sofia, inspired by Joyce’s Dubliners. The students’ poignant responses reflected their love for their troubled city mixed with an equally strong “eagerness for elsewhere.” Greenwell’s description of his time with these young writers offers a compelling portrait of how literature and life can inform and illuminate each other.

We follow Greenwell’s piece with a lesson by poet and teacher Beth Copeland on writing collaborative “lunch bag” sestinas with grade-school students. Copeland shows how to make this complicated form accessible and fun even for younger students.

In the first of a series of teaching artist “snapshots” we offer a glimpse into the life of poet, playwright, and long-time T&W teaching artist Melanie Maria Goodreaux, who describes her writing and teaching with wit, wisdom, and humor, and offers a lovely sample lesson from her work in the classroom.

An excerpt from Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy, & Social Justice in Classroom & Community, by Georgia A. Popoff and Quraysh Ali Lansana, forthcoming from T&W in spring 2011, argues for the importance of “demystifying the poem” for students, allowing them to pursue an open-ended investigation that will enrich, rather than limit, their understanding of the work. Popoff follows up with a lesson that gives practical guidance for how this can be done.

We close with a meditation by Nicole Callihan, who reflects on her life as poet, mother, and teacher of autistic children and how these overlapping roles, though sometimes conflicting, ultimately give her deeper insight into her work. Or, as one of her students puts it, “Life without dreams is like a heart without wheels!”

We hope you enjoy the issue! If so, think of offering the gift of a year’s subscription to a teacher, writer, or teaching artist on your list this season. And as always, we’d love to hear your responses to any of the articles in the magazine.

To read Garth Greenwell’s Bechtel Prize-winning essay and other sample articles from Teachers & Writers, or to subscribe, go to http://www.twc.org/publications/magazine/magazine-sample.

WORKSHOPS

T&W Writing Programs Span New York City Region

T&W writer Maya Pindyck began her fourth workshop at Bedford Stuyvesant Preparatory High School in Brooklyn with a free-writing prompt. Bed Stuy Prep is an alternative public high school providing a second chance for students needing a new scholastic start. Pindyck asked the students to write a list of the advice and/or instructions they hear regularly from parents or authority figures. She suggested “Do your homework or else” as an example, and instructed students to imagine the tone of voice used by the authority figure and to work to remember the instruction’s exact wording.

As is often the case in T&W programs, the students’ writing provided a unique window into their daily experiences. Their free-writes included:

• If you don’t graduate you’ll be picking up bottles.
• I’m going to smack tomorrow out of you.
• You always want money.
• Don’t look at me with that fat face of yours looking like your father’s.
• Always have your own.

Pindyck used the free-write as an introduction to reading and discussion of Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl,” a one-sentence short story that catalogs a long list of parental instructions. After the reading, Pindyck asked students to write fictive scenes in which they responded freely to their authority figures.

Bed Stuy Prep is one of three alternative high schools that have hosted T&W writing programs this year, and one of 32 T&W programs currently underway or about to begin in the New York City area. These programs reach neighborhoods from the South Bronx and Harlem to Union Square and the Lower East Side, across the East River in Queens and Brooklyn, and all the way out to the Long Island suburbs. T&W writers are leading writing programs for students and professional development workshops for teachers in genres as varied as poetry and research-based essay writing.

T&W recently began planning spring programs. Again and again, we hear from principals and teachers about students’ low skill-levels and lack of interest in reading and writing. These same principals and teachers look to partner with T&W because they recognize the potential broad-reaching impact of creative writing programs-not just in developing students’ reading and writing skills, but also in promoting students’ confidence, motivation to read and write, and sense of ownership of their school work.

To learn more about T&W programs and how working with our writers can benefit the students and teachers at your school or in your lives, please contact T&W at workshops@twc.org or 212-691-6590.

WITS ALLIANCE

Writers-in-the-School Programs at 2011 AWP Conference

The WITS Alliance, a national network of organizations and individuals offering writers-in-the-schools programs, is again a literary partner in the 2011 AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) Conference, which will be held February 2-5, in Washington, DC.

A full schedule of events of interest to those involved in WITS programs will be available early in 2011. If you plan to be at AWP, please be sure to look for the following panel sessions that are sponsored by the WITS Alliance.

• We Were All Poets in the 3rd Grade: What Happened?: Investigating why K-12 students go from a willingness to engage creative writing to being afraid or indifferent, and best teaching practices to re-engage students.

• Paths of Passion: WITS Links to University Teaching and Writing Career: How does WITS experience help writers get jobs as professors, shape their teaching, and nurture their own writing?

• A Classroom as Big as the World: Highlights from programs that take kids out of the box of the classroom to get them out of the box with their writing.

• Camps: Artful Paths for Summer Income: Strategies for summer programs that help students experience writing as fun while providing work for writers and generating income for WITS organizations.

• Poetry and Partnership: The Critical Elements for Writers-in-the-Schools Programs: Exploring the importance to WITS programs of strong relationships with board members, funders, and key decision-makers for school districts.

• Realities of the Classroom: Personalities and Boundaries: How do teaching artists create constructive boundaries with students, while navigating gender, race, class, and age in ways that respect both classroom legalities and students’ rights?

For more information about these panels and a full listing of WITS events during AWP, please see the conference program book or stop by the WITS Alliance booth (#307) in the AWP Bookfair.

ONLINE COMMUNITIES

T&W Survey on Digital Communities

Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) is planning new community-building initiatives to link writers, teachers, and others interested in literary arts education via a variety of online platforms. You can help us to shape these new initiatives by clicking on the link below and responding to this survey.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/J5PSV77

We value your perspective and appreciate your participation in this survey process. Thank you!